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Article published October 3, 2012

Boot or velvet glove?

GG
Erich Kaltenhauser Jefferson Township

Congressman Mike Kelly gave a speech recently claiming a “boot on the neck” of the job creators like himself.Is it a boot on one’s neck or a velvet glove when the middle class pays taxes to support the destruction of perfectly good cars and then subsidizes car dealerships by giving money to some people to buy new cars from dealerships?Is it a boot on the neck when small dealerships’ franchise contracts are violated and they are forced to shut down, and the large car dealers benefit from the new customers?Is it a boot on the neck when a commercial public utility profits from having its pipelines under my property and other people’s land and we pay taxes on that land and cannot use it?Is it a boot on the neck when some privileged congressmen can vote to have no capital gains taxes and then sell their public utility stocks for millions of dollars’ profit and pay no taxes?Is it a boot on the neck when car dealers can use dealer license plates on the cars they drive to the grocery store or when driving their kids to school, etc., when other citizens are told they must pay separate taxes and fees on every car they drive?Is it a boot on the neck when the wealthy claim “free trade” to import millions of cars from foreign nations when the Constitution clearly declares that Congress shall regulate trade and commerce with foreign nations? Free trade is the total absence of regulations (unconstitutional), and anyone who espouses such propaganda borders on treason.Kelly doesn’t seem to realize the difference between a government jackboot on the neck and a velvet glove. And he shouldn’t try to tell us that the wealthy pay more income taxes than the rest of us.It’s supposed to be like that because income tax is a tax on corporate privilege, not the citizens’ right to work.The boot on the neck is on the American middle class and it’s about time the rich pay their fair share of taxes.Two hundred years ago, President Thomas Jefferson said the rich were not paying their share of the taxes, and they never have yet.